JOHN BELLANY
A Memorial Tribute
JOHN BELLANY
A Memorial Tribute 10 October - 2 November 2013
Front cover: Self Portrait with Fish Skeleton, c.1971 (detail) Opposite: The Scapegoat, 1970 (detail) Back Cover: The Burden, 1970 (detail)
Introduction This October,The Scottish Gallery presents a small exhibition in honour of John Bellany, who sadly passed away this summer on August 28. Bellany was one of Scotland’s great artists, and his death has been a loss to the British and International art world, as well as to the ones he held dear. This exhibition focuses almost entirely on his work as a printmaker, a medium he first experimented with at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1960s under Robin Philipson, and which he was to develop and master over the succeeding decade. His etchings were a vehicle for the powerful, imaginative imagery familiar to us in his oil paintings. The prints combine simplicity of line and strong chiaroscuro and seem a distillation of the essence of his paintings. Included in the exhibition are rare prints from the early 1970s and 1980s a series of self-portraits, including one from the Addenbrookes series, when John called for pen and paper as he emerged from liver transplant surgery, are so brutally honest and immediate in their depiction that one is compelled not to break the artist’s stare. Bellany held a magnificent one-man show at The Scottish Gallery in 1986, the same year as his major retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Two years later, in 1988, John wrote to the Gallery from hospital: “..now a long period of convalescence with my brushes and watercolours for company..Your messages – willing me to survive, helped me at crucial moments when death was poised to strike. The love from friends all over the world, from every walk of life imaginable, made my battle victorious – DEATH TOUCHED MY CHEEK but PORT SETON MAN IS BACK!”
Opposite: The Artist in his studio, 1964
Fish Totem, 1970 etching, 48 x 37 cms, edition 11/75 signed in pencil ÂŁ1,250
The Burden was among a group of etchings Bellany produced in Winchester in 1970. They are characterised by a stark simplicity in which the loneliness of the existential vision of the world is strongly expressed, as was in his paintings of the same time. The Burden shows a single figure standing in a field of roughly drawn grass against a low horizon and an empty sky, a man staggering beneath the weight of a huge fish.
The Burden, 1970 etching, 45 x 48.5 cms, edition 23/7 signed in pencil ÂŁ1,950
The Scapegoat, 1970 etching, 49 x 52 cms, AP signed in pencil ÂŁ1,550
The Scapegoat was also part of the series completed by Bellany in Winchester, and is one of the largest in this early group.
Self Portrait of the Artist as an Angry Young Man, 1971 12.5 x 9 cms, edition 50/50 signed in pencil ÂŁ1,100
In this image and the one previously, Bellany wears a spotted bandana, which also appears in Self Portrait with Fish Skeleton and The Kiss II. Here, Bellany depicts himself as an angular, Picassoesque head, with a dog, or demon, perched behind him who glances out at the viewer. A half smoked cigarette is perched between the artist’s lips.
Self Portrait, 1971 etching 26 x 23.5 cms, AP signed in pencil ÂŁ1,000
Self Portrait with Fish Skeleton, c.1971 etching, 26 x 26 cms, AP signed in pencil ÂŁ1,550
Woman with Skate, 1971 etching, 36 x 32.5 cms, edition 5/50 signed in pencil ÂŁ1,250
The Kiss II (Head and Dog), 1972 etching, 25 x 25 cms, AP signed in pencil ÂŁ950
Conger Eel Woman Eats, 1977 etching, 24.8 x 20 cms, AP signed in pencil ÂŁ1,100
Fish Woman Loves It, 1977 etching, 24.5 x 24 cms, edition 25/25 signed in pencil ÂŁ1,350
Bellany’s printmaking went through stages of intense but sporadic production. His prints from the early 1970s, some of which feature in this catalogue, are some of his most memorable. He had another spree of printmaking in 1977 and in 1979 when he produced a set of prints at the Glasgow Print Studio. The Rose and Crown features from that series and depicts a couple hugging in a pub setting. The male figure looks out at the viewer with a sarcastic expression; the woman gives the man a similar look. This style of print established a new approach to printmaking which he would continue into the 1980s, when his printmaking was no longer a vehicle for his angst but began to move toward a kind of expression, but still injected with his own symbolic language.
Rose and Crown, 1977 etching, 24.5 x 20 cms, AP signed in pencil ÂŁ850
Recently Richard Demarco said “Bellany should be thought of as a great “European” artist who captured the human condition.He was a one-off. He dared to paint a reality which had been ignored – a community living a hard existence on the shores of the Firth of Forth.”
Portrait of Richard Demarco, 1984 charcoal drawing, 74 x 57.5 cms inscribed and dated upper right £1,850
This etching depicts the artist and the cricketer Sir Ian Botham whom Bellany painted in 1985. The portrait, which is now in The National Portrait Gallery, caused considerable controversy and was voted ‘rubbish’ by the Botham’s tabloid fans. An edition of this etching is also in the National Portrait Gallery collection.
Ian Botham, 1985 etching, 32.5 x 48.5 cms, edition 10/100 £950
Bass Rock Fable, 1985 etching, 24 x 16 cms, edition 1/100 signed in pencil ÂŁ950
David with Accordion red conté drawing, 52 x 40 cms inscribed lower left £1,550
Celtic Lovers II, 1986 etching, 49.5 x 33 cms, edition 50/50 signed in pencil ÂŁ1,100
John Bellany always used his immediate surroundings and personal experiences as his inspiration. In 1988, he underwent liver transplant surgery in Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge. As soon as he was out of intensive care, Bellany set to work producing self-portraits, charting the course of his hospitalisation and convalescence, covering the walls of his hospital room with drawings and watercolours in the process. They reflect the inevitable rollercoaster ride of the patient: the physical pain and discomfort, the fears that he might not pull through, and then the optimism about a his future life.
Self Portrait in Hospital II, 1988 etching, 45 x 50 cms, edition 2/20 signed in pencil ÂŁ1,100
The name ‘Bonaventure’, meaning good fortune, is a common name for boats and ships and is seen in the background of this etching. ‘Bonaventure’ appears in many of Bellany’s paintings including a famous work from 1986 of the same title.
Bonaventure etching, 20 x 35 cms, PP signed in pencil £1,450
The Burden II, c.2012 etching, 52 x 36 cms, edition 1/50 signed in pencil ÂŁ900
John Bellany CBE, RA, HRSA (1942 - 2013) John Bellany was born in 1942 in the Scottish fishing village of Port Seton, into a Calvinist family of ship-builders and fisherman. He attended the Edinburgh College of Art from 1960-5, under the tutelage of Sir Robin Phillipson and Sir William Gilles, and studied at the Royal College of Art from 1965-8. He went on to teach at Brighton, Winchester and Goldsmith’s Colleges of Art.
Early work in Northern European Expressionist-Realist tradition allied to personal symbolism and iconography often drawn from his family’s religious and sea-faring past. The work from the earlier part of his life was largely influenced by a trip to Buchenwald concentration camp, and the extensive personal struggles he had with alcohol and depression throughout the 1970s. His work is often highly challenging and autobiographical, as epitomised by a series of brutally unflinching self-portraits produced in the hospital following his liver transplant in 1988. After his operation, his art took on a lighter, more uplifting tone, corresponding with the appreciation he felt for his surgeon, and his remarriage to his first wife, Helen. In 1988, he became a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1991 he became a Royal Academician, and in 1994 he received a CBE. He died on August 28, 2013.
Right: The artist in his Clapham studio, 1986
Biography 1965-68 1967 1968 1969-73
Royal College of Art, London Official cultural visit to East Germany with Alan Bold & Alexander Moffat Lecturer in Painting, Brighton College of Art Lecturer in Painting, Winchester College of Art Visiting lecturer at Royal College of Art and Goldsmith’s College of Art 1978-84 Lecturer in Painting, Goldsmith’s College of Art Lecturer in Painting, Royal College of Art, London 1983 Artist in Residence, Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia 1988 Elected Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge 1994 Awarded CBE by Her Majesty, The Queen 1996 Awarded Honorary Doctorate, University of Edinburgh 1998 Awarded Honorary Doctorate, Herriot Watt University Honorary Senior Fellow, Royal College of Art, London 2002 Honorary Citizen, Focandora, Barga Awarded the Chevalier Medal, Florence Awarded the Freedom of San Cristoforo, Barga 2005 Awarded The Freedom of East Lothian 2009 Awarded Honorary Doctorate, Queen Margaret University, Scotland 2012 Retrospective Exhibition at National Galleries of Scotland Selected Public Collections Aberdeen Art Gallery British Museum Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Glasgow Art Galleries and Museums Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
National Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin National Library of Congress, Washington National Portrait Gallery, London Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Scottish National Portrait Gallery Tate Gallery, London